Posts Tagged ‘speedrunners’

Every month, we dispatch Brendan to some of gaming’s best blowouts to schmooze and play party games with the partygoers. This is part three.

Loading Bar (aka Scenario) is a videogame-themed bar in London that hosts gigs, games and parties. As well as having a cushy basement filled with screens and games consoles, it regularly welcomes groups of Smash Bros devotees or Netrunner fans to take part in friendly tournaments. It also hosts a local multiplayer night called Multiclash, where developers can show off their party games. All this while serving up colourful cocktails with names like “Earthworm Gin” and “Rum: Total War”. Obviously, with all this going on, RPS needed somebody to investigate.

When I arrive at the bar, located deep in the city’s hipster underbelly of Stoke Newington, there are about five games on show. It is probably best to go through them one by one, giving each its due attention. But before that, a trip to the bar staff is in order. As the night wears on, I find that the cocktails being served to me have become (mostly) synchronised to the games, each a little alcoholic companion that would last only until I finished murdering that wretched blue swordsman in Samurai Gunn, or outpacing that dastardly unicorn in Speedrunners. For the most part, they were pretty damn good. As such, it would only be fair to rate the cocktails as accompaniments alongside the games. What games, you ask? Well, let’s take a look at what we played.

Say kid, how do you fancy being a YouTube sensation, a real livestream Liberace? “B-but where would I even start?” you ask, eyes wide with hope. A new Humble Weekly Sale offers almost everything you need to become an Internet megastar, minus the hardware and a dreadful persona.

Curated by ‘PewDiePie’ (he has YouTube’s most-subscribed channel, don’t you know?) the bundle packs a few games the exhausting manbaby personality has wailed obscenities over, including Surgeon Simulator 2013, Garry’s Mod, and State of Decay.

“We are about to reveal a new game!” No Time To Explain dev/burgeoning indie publisher Alex Nichiporchik told me over Skype. Almost reflexively, I braced myself for an excited slurry spew about some crazy new platformer or a zany comedy adventure or an emotional tale that would rock me to my very core. “It’s basically a fusion of Just Cause 2 and Battlefield 3,” he proceeded to tell me. “…Oh,” I replied, briefly mistaking a flock of birds fluttering by outside for a car tethered to a plane with a wildman surfing atop it, as I often do. “Go on.” And so he did. Go below to find out about JetGetters‘ plane-jacking antics, its accompanying Kickstarter (because of course), how TinyBuild hopes to make dogfights more interesting, shifting levels, purposefully limited player counts, and why TinyBuild’s not on board with free-to-play.

Despite what some triple-A publishers might think, piracy isn’t a simple black-and-white subject. Pirates aren’t necessarily shifty-eyed thieves, and a pirated copy doesn’t necessarily equate to a lost sale. You can’t beat it, either, so you might as well come aboard and embrace that other audience that’s playing your game. Increasingly, that’s the mentality many indies have adopted, and SpeedRunners developer tinyBuild is following suit. All of the wickedly fun multiplayer platform-racer’s offline features will be free of charge straight out the gate. If you want updates further down the line, then you can buy the full game. It’s your call.

Ah, that greatest of all inventions, the grappling hook. Where would the world be without it? Likely a passing oddity of scorched earth and radioactive waste for some alien civilization. DoubleDutch Games have seen fit to immortalise this world-changing piece of undeniably brilliant technology in SpeedRunners. It’s a 2D platforming racer which Adam’s thrown words about before. Now that it’s up on Steam Early Access, I’ve managed to give it a little play so feast your eyes on the latest trailer and some thoughts when you slide under the break.